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    Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography
    Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography
    Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography
    Audiobook4 hours

    Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography

    Written by Janet Browne

    Narrated by Josephine Bailey

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, award-winning biographer Janet Browne delves into the long genesis of Darwin's theories, from his readings as a university student and his five-year voyage on the Beagle, to his debates with contemporaries and experiments in his garden. She explores the shock to Darwin when he read of competing scientists' similar discoveries and the wide and immediate impact of Darwin's theories on the world. As one of the launch titles in the Atlantic Monthly Press's Books That Changed the World series, Browne's history takes readers inside The Origin of Species and shows why it can fairly claim to be the greatest science book ever published.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 24, 2007
    ISBN9781400173884
    Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography
    Author

    Janet Browne

    Janet Browne is a professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. She is the author of the landmark two-volume biography of Charles Darwin: Voyaging, as well as The Power of Place and Darwin's Origin of Species (Atlantic 2006).

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    Reviews for Darwin's Origin of Species

    3.5/5

    62 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A very short introduction to the topic, somewhat simplified. For a day's light reading, you could do a lot worse.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyed this concise but packed with essential stories.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyably informative...Darwin's a fascinating character in a very "un-flashy" way, and I was struck by the deep respect in the relationship with his wife, Emma, even though they were worlds apart in religious orientation.
    • 3/5
      This book was disappointing, although not actually bad. I had hoped for more, since I have seen Janet Browne's biography of Darwin much praised. The promise of the title is that this book is about "The Origin", but it is not, it's just a capsule biography of Darwin and a discussion of the theory of evolution both as proposed by Darwin and as it has been amended and challenged more recently. You, the reader, can easily do better than this book. For a brief biography of Darwin himself, you could do far worse than to read Thomas Henry Huxley's obituary for the Royal Society in the volume of his collected essays titled "Darwiniana". For a more contemporary biography and a discussion of the meaning of and reactions to Darwin's theory you can try "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin" by David Quammen or indeed, "Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man". If you want to get into more depth about the Darwinian legacy, "Darwin's Spectre: Evolutionary Biology in the Modern World" by Michael Rose, would be a better choice. Or, go to the source, "The Origin" is a very pleasant listen, especially as narrated by David Case.Sadly, this book adds nothing to the existing corpus of Darwin biography and analysis.
    • 4/5

      Probably unsurprisingly, this jolly little book doesn't quite live up to its promise in the subtitle -- really it's a selective biography of Darwin himself, focusing on those elements of his life that related to Origin, from inception through composition to aftermath, plus the reactions of others to it. Browne is the author of one of the biographies of Darwin, the whopping two-volume (1200 pages) study comprising Voyaging (1996) and The Power of Place (2003), so obviously she knows what she's talking about; in consequence, I was slightly alarmed to come across the occasional footling mistake, such as spelling Stephen Jay Gould's first name with a "v" rather than a "ph". Such annoyances aside, this was a great read and surprisingly informative for a book that appears at first to be so slight.
    • 3/5
      A very short introduction to the topic, somewhat simplified. For a day's light reading, you could do a lot worse.
    • 3/5
      An excellent telling of the effects of Darwin's work all the up to modern day.
    • 4/5
      Dense yet brief, not a biography of Darwin but a story of the conception, creation and reception of the book that changed everything. Other men were cast out of society for promoting very similar theories: Darwin's mild-mannered character and lovely writing helped make "On the Origin of the Species" a hit.
    • 4/5
      An interesting essay (not unlike an article from the New Yorker), that can be read in an evening. Part of the Books that Changed the World Series.